If anyone needed a foreshadowing of why the post–Steph Curry era terrifies the Golden State Warriors, Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards provided one on Monday night.
With Curry watching from the sideline, Edwards took the Chase Center stage. Just before the halftime buzzer, he tore the hearts out of Warriors fans with a crossover into a 30-foot deep ball that looked eerily similar to a vintage Curry 3. Then, he came out of the break with force, scoring 16 points in the third quarter to push Minnesota’s lead to 20. By the end of the night, Edwards had filled the box score with 30 points, five rebounds, and four assists.
After the game, a 117-110 Wolves victory that gave Minnesota a 3-1 lead in the series, Edwards sauntered over to Section 17, near the Wolves’ tunnel. He exchanged pleasantries with Oakland legend Gary Payton, gave his jersey to a lucky young fan, and then strutted to the locker room like a man who’d just been handed the deed to the building.
“Well, Ant got going,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr told reporters a few minutes later. “They kept scoring, and we couldn’t score.”
Such has been the case for the past week, since Curry pulled his hamstring midway through the first quarter of Game 1 of the Western Conference semifinals. The Warriors notched a 99-88 victory in that game, buoyed by Curry’s 13 quick points to start the contest before riding a vintage Draymond Green performance and a timely Buddy Hield heater the rest of the way. But if that game gave the Warriors a glimmer of hope that the team could overcome Curry’s absence, the subsequent three have provided a sobering reality check.
Pressed into leading-man duty, Jimmy Butler has struggled to keep the Warriors afloat while battling a pelvic injury; he’s shooting just 44 percent in the series, far from the “Playoff Jimmy” standard he’s set throughout his career. Green, who has been overtaxed by guarding bigger frontcourt players, has produced more technical fouls than double-digit scoring outputs this postseason. Brandin Podziemski has hit just four of his past 24 shots, and Moses Moody didn’t record his first field goal of the series until the 1:53 mark in the fourth quarter of Game 4.
This is what it looks like when the sun falls out of the solar system. For most of Curry’s career, the Warriors have struggled to win the minutes when he is on the bench, let alone unavailable. Golden State’s entire system is designed to take advantage of his shooting and tireless movement. Now, the Warriors must climb out of a 3-1 hole without their central organizing principle—the driving force behind four championships and this most recent push into the second round of the playoffs. To watch this series is to wonder: What even are the Warriors without Curry?
That question is part of the reason Golden State traded for Butler, a mercurial star but a reliable postseason performer. The beauty of Butler's fit in Golden State lies in his ability to play both next to Steph and without him. During the regular season, Butler was able to prop up the Warriors when Curry hit the bench as well as innately understand how to play off actions that Green and Curry have been running for more than a decade. But there’s a big difference between keeping the machine running while Curry takes a four-minute breather and driving that machine past an elite defense in the playoffs.
“It’s HARD playing without that man,” Butler said of Curry after three Steph-less quarters in Game 1. Butler and the rest of Golden State's supporting cast have had to move up the call sheet—and adjust to a Butler-centric offense on the fly.
“We know we’re not going to get the same gravity,” Kevon Looney tells me. “Jimmy kind of picks his spots where he wants to really run or he wants to slow it down. He’s a great game manager, so that’s why it’s a lot different. Steph is always in chaos, always in open court where we’re throwing and we’re running and running, but with Jimmy it’s more methodical.”
To help mitigate Curry’s absence, Kerr has turned to Jonathan Kuminga, the Warriors’ 22-year-old conundrum who barely played during the team’s seven-game series against Houston. Last season, the former lottery pick averaged a career-high 16.1 points, along with five rebounds and two assists. Kuminga has many of the attributes NBA teams want in a modern wing: He can run the floor, knife into the paint, and guard multiple positions. But an ankle injury in January sidelined him, and by the time he returned to the floor, Golden State had traded for Butler, whose redundancy with Kuminga reduced the latter’s role and minutes.
Despite his talent, Kuminga’s propensity to look for his shot at the expense of the flow of Golden State’s offense has irked the coaching staff. During a late-season game against the Blazers, team sources say Kerr was incensed after several instances in which Kuminga looked off Curry to create his own offense. Kuminga subsequently received DNPs in the Warriors’ regular-season finale against the Clippers and then again in their play-in matchup against the Grizzlies. By the start of the playoffs, many within the organization wondered whether Kuminga, who is eligible for an extension, had played his last game as a Warrior.
But all of a sudden, Kuminga finds himself at the center of Golden State’s fading postseason chances. Against the Wolves in Game 3, thin on bodies and desperate for a spark, Kerr turned to Kuminga to provide it—and the fourth-year wing responded mightily, finishing with 30 points and six rebounds in the best postseason performance of his career, complementing Butler’s triple-double. “It just took me some time to figure out how to play with him,” Kuminga told me after that game. “When he attacks, just get out of the way. If you don’t have an open layup, get out of the way.”
Over the Warriors’ past three games, Kuminga has averaged a team-high 24 points. His speed and ability to scrounge for buckets have helped Golden State remain competitive as Curry recovers.
“You can’t just give up when you’re not in the game,” Kuminga tells me. “Either you’re wrong or you’re not getting your way. It’s the only way, it just keeps getting better.
“Keep staying poised,” he continued, “and keep staying ready.”
Throughout his career, Kuminga has had to navigate conflicting opinions of his game within the Warriors organization. On the one hand, he has long been considered a favorite of team co-executive chairman Joe Lacob, who has viewed him as the kind of talent to carry the Warriors into the post-Curry era. On the other, he’s been unable to earn the consistent trust of the coaching staff, leading to his being yanked in and out of the rotation.
Over the years, Kuminga’s name has appeared in plenty of trade rumors as the Warriors have sought to upgrade the talent around Steph, but Lacob opted not to deal the wing.
Kuminga’s return to relevance in the Wolves series epitomizes the challenge the Warriors face when it comes to maximizing what’s left of Curry’s career while laying a foundation for whatever will come after. With Curry in the lineup, Kuminga struggles to integrate into the Warriors’ team concept, to the point of being nearly unplayable. Without Steph, he’s been a life raft for the Warriors and offered a glimpse of what he can offer in a different context.
I ask Kuminga how it feels to consider being the face of the Warriors. “That I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know how the future will look, but I just try to cancel out the noise and focus on getting better.
“If it’s going to be there, it’s going to be there. If it’s not going to be there, somebody at least, it’s going to be there for somebody else. That’s not my main focus. My main focus is to just keep looking up. There’s always going to be ups and downs in life. The more you keep getting better every day, just starting again, anything is possible.”
Since Golden State’s last title, the Warriors have tried to build a team that accentuates Steph but is also able to carry him when needed. A few weeks before the trade deadline, I asked Curry what he’d like to see from the front office.
“I want to win; I want to be competitive,” he responded. “Doesn’t mean you’re going to be the odds-on favorite to win a championship; you just want to have a situation where you can be in the conversation. That’s what we all want. It’s what we all deserve.”
Soon after, the front office delivered Butler, and the Warriors surged into the conversation. Unfortunately, Curry’s injury knocked the train off the tracks and provided yet another reminder of the ticking clock for the 37-year-old superstar. Curry could return from his hamstring strain if the Warriors can push the series to six or seven games, but either way, the door will close on the greatest run in franchise history eventually.
Until then, the front office will continue to scour the league for players who can work with Steph. Sources say Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo made a surprise visit to Curry’s party at a bar on the Chase Center concourse on the eve of February’s All-Star Game, giving some the impression he’d be open to joining forces with Curry someday. Antetokounmpo is reportedly open to considering a move out of Milwaukee, but Golden State’s potential trade package pales in comparison to those of teams like the Rockets, Spurs, and even the lottery-winning Mavericks. Instead, the Warriors may need to continue pursuing deals on the margins. The Warriors have something with the Curry-Butler-Draymond trio, but they need an infusion of youth and talent around them. Even Kuminga isn’t expected back.
But first, the Warriors are hoping to extend the series long enough for their Batman to make a return. “To be honest with you, not good,” Buddy Hield told me of Curry’s mood after Game 3. “I mean, he’s been good, but he just knows that we should be up 3-0.”
Heading into Game 5, the Warriors will need yet another reinvention in his absence. They’ll have to find new ways to play and other ways to win—even if they aren’t as pretty as a high-arcing Curry 3. “Have to come up with all the loose balls and set that type of tone,” Green said following Game 4. “Then defensively, gotta be really good.
“You give up 117 points without Steph, you’re probably losing,” he continued, “because the likelihood that we’re going to score 117 points without him is not that high. So everyone has to commit to getting it done on the defensive end, everybody being on the string. That’s how we give ourselves a chance.”
